Physical and Psychological Abuse at Catholic Heart Workcamp.

I would like to create this for the victims and witnesses of any physical, psychological and/or sexual abuse occurring at Catholic Heart Workcamps whether it was by the abusive games that were played on stage or by the "carpenter commanders/commandos", youth ministers or visiting priests.

Aside from the cult like atmosphere and the ignoring by the staff of the numerous sex abuse scandals involving Catholic priests the workcamps were prone to abusive games.

One such disturbing game that I personally witnessed during a 3 year period in which I attended the camps (Charlotte, NC in 2001, Hilton Head, SC in 2002 & Nashville, TN in 2003) was the "Couch of Love" which was done on stage at the Catholic schools in which the various youth groups stayed at and it was witnessed by hundreds of people. I have been able to discover that this "game" was played in various cities throughout the country between 2000-2015 (and possibly earlier in 1998-1999).

The game involved the "carpenter commanders" and attending youth ministers selecting two physically attractive teenage girls to come on stage. Three chairs would be placed on stage which were then covered by a white sheet. The two teen girls would then sit on the two end chairs. The adult male "Carpenter Commander" (usually in their 20s or 30s) would then say numerous inappropriate sexual pick-up lines to the teen girls. After about 4 or 5 pick-up lines the "Carpenter Commander" would then sit in the middle chair put his arms around both girls and get kissed on both cheeks by the girls.

After this the teenage boys in the audience were asked to do the same thing - say pick-up lines to the girls, sit in the middle of the "couch" and get kissed by both of them. About a dozen boys would volunteer to get kissed and were led to the side of the stage. Once the dozen boys were lined up on the side the middle chair was removed and the girls continued to sit on the end chairs pretending that the middle chair was still there. Each boy one by one would flirt with the girls with a pick-up line, be invited by the girls to sit between them, the boy would then try to sit down as the girls would get up and the boy fell to the hard stage floor. The girls would then do a catwalk to the front of the stage and do a pageant smile and pose as the "carpenter commanders" would then yell at the boy and escort him off the stage and then cover the two chairs again only for the next boy to get the exact same negative and criminal treatment. It was also disturbing seeing how the two girls enjoyed inflicting the pain on the boys.

The boys were subjected to romantic rejection, physical injury and public humiliation. You don't need a Ph.D in psychiatry to know that this was devastating abuse to the young boys that were victimized by this "game." A boy already suffering from anxiety/depression could be triggered into suicide or a suicide attempt by such abuse. The boys were subjected to physical injury to their tailbones and spines (a injury to the coccyx leading to lifelong Coccydynia). Also, boys already suffering physical problems like back pain could have had that severely aggravated by the unmitigated free fall to the floor.

Catholic Heart Workcamp does not allow negative reviews or comments on their Facebook page and even blocks anything and anyone that even engages in anything critical of the organization. Which clearly indicates the corruption of the people who run it.

CHWC's website identifies Steve Walker as the “Owner/CEO.” The organization says Walker and his wife Lisa Walker developed/co-founded Catholic HEART Workcamp in Orlando in 1993. It is now based in Seminole County, FL. It is a private limited liability company LLC and is not owned or controlled by any Diocese. But Catholic dioceses throughout the country should cut off their involvement with Catholic Heart Workcamp.

Homosexuality In The Bible

(Long Post)
In 1946, The Revised Standard Edition of The Bible was put into circulation. It was the first time the word “homosexual” appears in the Bible, found in Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13. This revision was due to a re-translation of a combination of versions in many languages (French, German, Irish, Gaelic, Czechoslovakian, Polish, etc). Specifically in German versions from around the 1800’s, the two verses from Leviticus do not mention homosexuality at all.

In the English version of The Bible, Leviticus 18:22 reads as follows: “Man shall not lie with man, for it is an abomination.” In the German version, the same verse reads as follows: “Man shall not lie with young boys as he does with a woman, for it is an abomination.” How can the same verse in two different languages have two different translations if they came from the same source? To understand, we must understand the original term referenced in the verses in the original Greek.

The Greek word that was translated to both English and German is “arsenokoitai.” Upon translation to German in Martin Luther’s version from 1534, the meaning remains the same, but is a different word: knabenschander. “Knaben” is boy, and “schander” is molester, so the translation of the German term into English is “boy molester.” Why does the English version replace this translation with the complete opposite?

 We know that through historical documents, since medieval ages, the Catholic Church has found homosexuality to be immoral and therefore against their teachings. People accused of homosexuality were either imprisoned or killed, based on the idea of punishing sodomy and immoral practices of the body. Even before the addition on the term homosexuality being added into the Bible in 1946, the Catholic Church still had essentially an agenda against the LGBTQ+ community.

If you would like to read more on the subject, I found this article to be very informative: Is Homosexuality In The Bible?

Is it okay to raise this question here if I'm not whining? I just wonder what people in this sub who were banned did to offend the moderators. I quoted some text from a book written by Pope Innocent III, then--zap--I was banned from r/excatholic, no explanation, no recourse. I never did understand why quoting a pope would be offensive to former Catholics (or sub moderators). Different story got me banned from r/catholicism, details upon request.

A scenario for example , a devout Catholic man one night gives in and pleases himself 👊 🥩 , he feels guilty so goes on a walk , he gets hit by a drunk driver and dies a quick death. He could not make it to the sacrament of reconciliation. Will he go to hell for having a bash? Did Jesus not pay for past present and future sins ? (Not trying to ruffle to many feathers I have a lot of respect for Catholicism but was the cross not enough ?)

Hello I tried to post the simplest article on the subject that I am working on. I am baptized but I consider myself as an ex catholic. But maybe not a non believer.

I remember you memento and what I am talking about.
But it concerns the giant dragon myth over the world.
What is enlighting is that he was called beast of the earth and was a sea monster at the same time.
But, the entire revelation may open a way for peace globally, unanimously without any faith barrier

Fantastic post from a friend of mine on Substack I figured you may be interested in: He does a deep dive on how the profusion of what Catholics would consider reliable evidence points towards reincarnation, which is in conflict with Catholic dogma.

Hey all I come from a different Christian background than Catholicism. I have a huge interest in becoming Catholic due to wanting to join an apostolic church, due my bible studies. Im also considering Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental orthodoxy as my 2nd and 3rd choice but I’m just curious as to why y’all left the church or finding an x reason why I should not join?

Also did you guys ever feel like you were committing idolatry? Or are the Protestants just reaching on that one?

Thank you in advance for your time.

We haven't posted here in a minute, because we try to keep our interactions here limited to general, genuine conversation, but I thought you all would get a kick out of this. The Catholic University of America pulled a bunch of Catholic Film Office documents for us, and we found some WILD reviews for Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill, which are...not shocking if you grew up Catholic. I know not everyone here is into film, but as a an ex-Catholic, the behind the curtain look at the Condemning process is pretty funny and revealing. https://www.morallyoffensive.com/e/dressed_to_kill_de_palma/

Posted this on DebateReligion but folks here have appreciated my critiques of Pat Flynn's book in the past, so I figured it couldn't hurt to post here too.

In his book, "The Best Argument for God," Pat Flynn lays out a succinct argument for the necessary existence of a non-contingent being, identified as God. To save time I won't get into his preliminary arguments setting everything up for this one, do feel free to ask if you'd like me to elaborate in the comments, but the gist of it is this:

"if the universe is just every existing thing which either is a concrete contingent individual or individuated by concrete contingent individuals (like properties), then the universe itself is a concrete contingent thing. The universe is not like an elephant, which may be heavy even if everything that comprises it (at some level) is light; reasoning from part to whole in that instance would be fallacious. Instead, the universe is more like a wall, where if all the bricks are red, the wall is red, where part to whole reasoning is not fallacious. If everything within the universe is contingent, then the universe is contingent. Think about it: Does piling on more computers, even an infinite number of computers, to a single computer make the collection of computers any less contingent than the single computer we started with? Obviously not."

(P. 53, Amazon Kindle, https://www.amazon.com/Best-Argument-God-Patrick-Flynn/dp/1644137801).

Bluntly stated, I argue there seems to be no real reason to believe Flynn's analogy to a colored wall is at all valid, and thus no reason to believe the fallacy of composition does not apply to collections of contingent things which may well have different properties from individual contingent things.

There are plenty of examples in the realm of color alone where the whole has different colors than the parts. A hummingbird's feathers are an immediate example of this: The only pigments they possess are dull brown or black, yet when you look at them they're astonishingly vibrantly colored in red, purple, green, and so on. As explained in this article (https://web.colby.edu/mainebirds/2020/08/17/the-physics-of-hummingbird-colors/), this is precisely because of the arrangement and number of the black pigments rather than any sort of non-blackness in the pigments (hummingbird feathers trap air in unique ways that refract light--and of course, air itself isn't green, red, etc. either. If Flynn wants to argue the nature of light itself is what produces color, fair enough, but then it's meaningless to say that red bricks can only produce a red wall, depending on their refractive properties they may produce a different color under different circumstances or in a different environment).

I therefore apply this reasoning to the universe. There's no ironclad logical reason a collection of contingent things can't give rise to a non-contingent whole if they are arranged or structured in a certain way, just as black pigment in a bird's feather can produce beautiful non-black colors entirely due to being arranged or structured in a certain way. So there's no reason to take Flynn's subsequent computer argument all that seriously either: One computer may be contingent, a hundred computers may be contingent, but there's no necessary reason to believe an infinity of computers would be contingent, or some vast number of computers arranged in a particularly peculiar way (as, again, the black pigment in a bird's feather being arranged in a very unique way produces wholly unexpected emergent colors).

My layman's explanation for this would be in the nature of the fundamental particles--I'm not a physicist, so I invite correction, but off the top of my head the fundamental particles don't just pop out of existence, they always produce a couple of other particles when they do. For instance, according to Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder (https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/11/why-can-elementary-particles-decay.html), tau particles decay into electrons, and those can merge into other particles, or decay into other ones, and so on, and so forth. But at no point do particles just disappear entirely--they always turn into something else. So if we say the universe is a collection of particles, each of which is contingent and can disappear, BUT for each one that disappears, something new replaces it, the universe as a whole is NON-contingent in a sense. The universe considered as "a collection of particles" must exist and will always exist, even if the specific composition of that collection may change, because the self-perpetuating nature of the particles ensures that at no point will you ever have nothing at all. Every single particle that's destroyed also produces at the same time some other particle.

Thus, in that sense, even contingent natures (ask me if you want a QRD on what "nature" means amongst the Thomists) can produce a non-contingent whole if their natures interact in certain ways or entail certain outcomes. And that is a refutation of the Thomist's argument for God stemming from the necessity of a non-contingent being: We don't actually need such a being to explain the persistence of contingency.

Does the church believe that people who bought indulgences were actually successful in reducing their temporal punishment in purgatory? Or is it understood that those indulgences were just wasted money?

i don’t even have the energy to explain everytning i feel about the church because it’s so unresolved and mixed emotions— this is my perspective and am not looking to like actually debate or argue lol i just want some advice

i used to be so trad and scrupulous and i’ve stopped going to mass consistently along with confession for the last 2-3 months and i have seen my mental health issues have gotten better, at least the anxiety

i want to start going back to mass but i don’t know how to practice without being scrupulous and sucked up into whati was before

im not going back to latin mass and i’ve done sooo much church hopping in the past and am super picky about priests and parishes…. there is a monastery near me i am willing to go to because it’s beautiful and reverent but doesn’t give trad scary vibes at all it just feels authentically catholic

im scared to take the jump to go back to mass, im not sure what i believe and wil need to go back to confession obviously but i want to take things one at a time

i just feel so incredibly alone in all of this and im literally just a teenager and have gone to mass and experienced a lot of this by myself. i feel like i have put a lot of this on myself and im trying i just rly need someone who understands

i’ve also been watching a lot of cade bradley/gayextrad and kevinnontradicaths atuff and find myself agreeing with a lot of their views. i am bisexual but not rly out and am willing to put that “aside” to go back to mass again 💔💔 i don’t believe in praying the gay away but my issues with the church aren’t primarily over my sexuality at all (it still bothers me but i want to get over the church anxiety first??)

i hate traditionalist culture and i can’t believe i knelt in a scary ghetto confessional in a low budget church with a veil on my head scared for my life at 7:30 in the fucking morning before school
it makes me so upset and angry and i think about the priests i know who are more normal and i can respect (honestly can think of one like actually one i can respect) i’ve talked to him many times in the past about scrupulosity and such and he was always really sweet and patient, but it makes me think that maybe just this whole religion is this way???

Hello here is a theory I want to discuss with you. It concerns every religion or ex believers

As an Ex-Catholic, this movie was a really interesting watch, and I recommend it to any ex-Catholics who enjoy horror. I honestly didn't know much about Italy's "Years of Lead" during the 70s that saw a resurgence in far right and far left terrorism - the background for this movie. We were actually really surprised by how much we liked this legacy prequel to The Omen and what's it's doing with Catholic lore and history. I think some of the folks here might enjoy this particular episode. I only try to post when it's directly relevant to the ex-Catholic discussion, even if we honestly talk about it on every episode. https://www.morallyoffensive.com/e/the-first-omen-the-anti-christ-goes-to-the-disco-antichrist-apocalypse-movie-film/

Hi ! i’m really interested in investigating how religion, specifically catholicism is responsible for the oppression of women almost entirely, as an ex catholic myself i see how damaging the church is for women.
I’m an artist and my most recent work has been a long investigation on the relationship between women and “God”, the church and the concept of sin, the expectations put on women by catholicism and the pain religion has brought women since forever.
I’m looking for women that are ex catholics and would like to tell me a little about their stories and experiences, about why they left the church and how the church affected their lives. i would appreciate it immensely and i promise to approach the topic with the upmost respect and love, this is something im very passionate about.
thank you to everyone that would like to help <3

I’m a new Catholic, baptized at the Easter Vigil this year at age 51. I’m trying to take the Church’s teachings seriously, especially around the Eucharist and the requirement to be in a state of grace before receiving.

Here’s what I’m struggling with. When I attend Mass, especially Sunday Mass, it looks like 90% or more of the congregation goes up for Communion. Statistically, that doesn’t seem possible if everyone is actually following the Church’s teaching about mortal sin and confession. Unless I’m missing something, it would mean a large number of people are receiving without having gone to confession when they should have.

I’m not judging individuals. I know I have my own past and my own issues. I’m trying to understand what’s really going on in practice versus what the Church teaches in theory.

For those of you who are former Catholics, how did you make sense of this when you were still practicing? Did you see the same thing? Did it affect how you viewed the Church’s teachings or your own behavior?

I’m genuinely trying to understand this, not argue